2014 Malaysian Grand Prix

After yesterday’s downpour there was no significant rainfall during today’s race. But the threat of rain did shape the outcome of the grand prix.

As the hard compound tyre was considerably slower than the medium teams postponed using it until their final, shortest stint. This also meant that if rain arrived during the race they might be able to avoid using it entirely.

However Fernando Alonso got his hard tyre stint out of the way early and was able to drive an attacking final stint. He could have reaped even greater dividends from this had a late-race Safety Car brought him within range of the cars ahead.

While most drivers elected for three-stop strategies in Malaysia, Nico Hulkenberg was an exception in the Force India. But that meant running a long final stint on the hard tyres.

It left him up to two seconds per lap slower than Alonso on track, and though he tried to resist the Ferrari in DRS-era Formula One it was always going to be unlikely that he could hold on to his track advantage.

Would it be possible to show a chart/table giving data on which lap a driver has overtaken another driver? For example, today on lap 1 Rosberg overtook Vettel. Anyway, many thanks for all the stats/charts currently being provided by f1fanatic.

Great stats Keith! From this it can clearly be seen that McLaren are not only not fast enough but they can’t make their tyres last as well. It looks as if pre-season testing flattered to deceive, and from this, the first ‘proper’ race, it would seem that thus far, the MP29 is no better than last year’s car. The Mercedes, Red Bull and even Ferrari appear to be in a different league.